All right, I finally bit the bullet and installed Kubuntu on my laptop. The
MBR survived, and GRUB updated normally.
Unfortunately, the computer won't start now. When I boot, I get as far as
"Checking battery state [ ok ]", and then the computer hangs. I've done some
research and found suggestions that this may be related to the NVidia
drivers, but since this computer has an ATI Radeon card, I doubt that's the
issue. I'm booting with noapic nolapic acpi=off options, but none of those
have done a lick of good.
Any suggestions, anyone?
--
Richard S. Crawford (http://www.mossroot.com)
"That which does not kill me makes me stranger."
-Llewellyn, from Ozy & Millie